Tuesday, December 25, 2012

When Jesus opened his mortal eyes for
the first time, what does he see?What do the eyes of God see from this new perspective?Certainly he sees straw, and strips of
linen, and the interior of a candlelit cave, for tradition has it that the
Bethlehem municipal stable was situated in a cave.And he sees barn animals, perhaps birds in the rafters, and
the relieved face of his father, and the exhausted, gleaming, smiling face of
his mother.

He would have heard and smelled the
muffled sounds and musty scents of a barn.He would have felt for the first time the sensation of cold
air on wet skin.He would have
instinctively gasped for his first breath, which must be a bracing and weird
feeling for all of us who were used to getting oxygen in liquid form for nine months.

These must have been his first experiences
of life in this world.They were
not all that different from what every one of us experienced, even if we can’t
remember.For most of us it was
the interior of a hospital room and masked doctors and nurses.But the experience of this big world
must come as a complete shock to all of us.So the first thing we do is cry.

And why should we not cry?We have just
been flushed out of paradise through no fault of our own, a place where all our
needs were automatically met, a climate-controlled place of extreme comfort,
where our whole life swum to the steady rhythm of our mother’s heartbeat.

Suddenly everything is an effort,
starting with the breathing.And
nothing happens automatically anymore, now everything must be cried for.So we cry.

One of our favorite Christmas hymns
says of Jesus’ birth, “But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.”I think these words represent the
wishful thinking of a parent who has vivid memories of a baby screaming his
lungs out at 3 am, and can’t imagine that of Jesus.Or perhaps of a theologian who intends to make Jesus more
perfect and spiritual than real.But I find it hard to believe that Jesus did not cry when he was
born.Indeed, a doctor would
probably be very concerned that something might be terribly wrong with a non-crying infant.

I think Jesus did cry... but not just for the reasons we cry when we are born.Not out of anger, or discomfort, or fear, or shock, or reflex, any of
the reasons we imagine a baby begins her or his interaction with the world by
screaming bloody-murder.

II.

Jesus is God.And, though it is impossible for us to even imagine the
thoughts of God, perhaps we may reflect on what it meant for God to suddenly
start seeing the world through our eyes.I think Jesus cried just out of sheer love and pity for us, that we
could live and be conscious and see so little.That we could be so lonely and fragile.What must it be like to go from being
able to see and perceive everything in the universe at once — galaxies, supernovae,
molecules, subatomic particles, planets, gamma rays, ecosystems, elephants,
amoebas, thoughts, feelings, angels and archangels, seraphs and cherubs, and
everything — to being limited to this impossibly tiny space inside a barn?

What must it be like to go from being,
as one classic Presbyterian prayer has it, “infinite, eternal and unchangeable,
glorious in holiness, full of love and compassion, abundant in grace and
truth,” to being a little bundle of meat wrapped in a blanket?One minute he is omnipotent, the next
he needs someone to carry him around, keep him warm, feed him, burp him, change
him, and rock him to sleep.He who
spoke the whole universe into being now can’t even communicate to his parents
well enough so they can figure out whether he is cold or hungry or in pain.

I think he did cry.But not out of grief for his own loss
of stature, not because he missed the glories of heaven.But because he now knows the kind of
life we humans have to live every moment of every day.Now he experiences first-hand the
consequences of the sin that we have been enduring for generation after
miserable generation.Now he
understands why it has been so hard for God to get through to people — he sends
the Law, he sends the prophets, he sends the Scriptures, and people still don’t
get it.

Now he understands that the humans are
just trying to stay alive from moment to moment.Our life is incredibly delicate and we enter existence in a
desperate fight for breath and sustenance and security.We only live for a few decades at best,
which is the briefest of fleeting instants.And we can’t see beyond a few hundred yards and even that is
only a tiny fraction of the light spectrum, and on and on and on.And it must have broken his heart
immediately.

We know how our hearts break when our
child experiences failure or loss, or illness or pain, or, God forbid, abuse or
neglect.When they come up against
their limitations and realize their own weaknesses, we love them all the more
because that is the human condition and we’re all stuck in it.Or even more when they make mistakes
and out of their own willfulness get themselves into pain and misery.We warn them and they don’t
listen.And they make it worse for
themselves and there’s nothing we can do about it.Except watch with breaking hearts and be there if they come
back to us.

In Jesus God experiences all this from
the inside.Like the good king who
dons a disguise and goes to live with the peasants, or like the beneficent boss
who surreptitiously works for a while on the assembly line or on the shipping
dock, or like the general who mucks around in the trenches on the front-line
with the troops.In Jesus, God
suddenly experiences the life of these others whom he loves, and loves them all
the more.

III.

Jesus does cry.He cries for us.He cries the tears we don’t even know
enough to cry because we don’t know any different.This is just the human condition, we think.You gotta play the hand you’re dealt,
we think.

But Jesus knows different.He knows what the Father’s original
intention was, for he is the Father’s
original intention.He knows the
true nature of the life we are given, because he’s the One who gave it to us.He knows the true expanse of the
universe and our place in it.He
knows what we are still capable of, and what potential God has placed within
us, and what our true destiny is.And he sees how we throw it away in our blindness, trading in our
destiny for trivialities and trinkets and ephemeral comforts and perishable
securities.

And perhaps this infant’s tears of pity
and sadness changed into tears of hope and even joy when he looked into the
face of his mother.Because in
spite of all this weakness he now knows, all this fragility, limitedness,
smallness, and mortality; in spite of how much work and effort it took just to
keep a body alive; in spite of the fact that these people couldn’t even
normally see angels, much less the
abiding Presence of God all around them, in the face of all that, some still
trusted in God.All they had was
an old book and some arcane rituals, but some still believed.Some still heard God’s call and said
“yes” to it, even when it was very costly to do so.

“I am the servant of the Lord; let it
be to me according to your Word.”That’s what his mother had said to the angel who announced his
conception.And the mere fact that
she could be a mortal human, as he now was, and not be God, as he was, and
still have the depth of faith to say this... well, it must have meant that this
baby’s life would not be in vain.There was at least this something to work with.There were still people who trusted in
God and put their lives into God’s hands.There were still people who would pay attention.

“God became human,” confessed the early
Church, “So that human beings might become God.”Just as God, in Christ Jesus, becomes one of us, so also we,
in Christ Jesus, become restored to God.Just as God sees our world through our eyes in Jesus, so also in Jesus
we see things from God’s perspective.And the Incarnation, which is the theological term for what we celebrate
at Christmas, is precisely where this all comes together.And it is all about love.

IV.

God becomes one of us out of love,
choosing and affirming and taking on our whole mortal existence.And out of the same love we now choose
and affirm and take on the very life of God, revealed to us in Jesus Christ, as
did Mary.This life is a life of
love and joy, salvation and peace, goodness and truth, faithfulness and
hope.

God sees us through Jesus’ eyes.Through Jesus’ eyes we see who God
really is.And in the process we
come to see ourselves, who we really are in the sight of God, which
is the only sight that matters.In
God’s eyes we are not the mortal, broken, limited, doomed creatures we think we
are.No.To God we are children of light, destined for glory.Christ comes to reveal that to us.Just as he opened his eyes that holy
night in Bethlehem, so now he opens our
eyes.

And we behold that our world is not as
we perceive it with our eyes of flesh, but with our eyes of the Spirit we now
see, as Paul proclaims ecstatically in Ephesians: that “Before the foundation
of the world [God] chose us in Christ to be his people, to be without blemish
in his sight, to be full of love; and he predestined us to be adopted as his
children through Jesus Christ....In Christ our release is secured and all our sins forgiven through the shedding
of his blood.In the richness of
his grace God has lavished on us all wisdom and insight.He has made known to us his secret
purpose... namely that the universe, everything in heaven and on earth might be
brought into a unity in Christ.”

Because Christ comes to be with us,
through him we come to be with God.That’s what’s going on here.That’s the message of Christmas.That is the good news.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

In
our story for today, the newly pregnant Mary apparently stays with her relative
Elizabeth, perhaps right up until Elizabeth has her baby.When that day arrives, Elizabeth, in
her old age, gives birth to a son.And all her neighbors and friends celebrate this great miracle with her.Elizabeth is not isolated and
alone.She is surrounded by a
largely unnamed “they” who reflect and guide the process here.

On
the eighth day, the proud parents present their son for the ancient ceremony of
circumcision, a sign of the covenant between God and Israel since the time of
Abraham.Thus we see a community
extended in back in time, longitudinally, we would say today.Some of the “they” present may refer to
the elders of the community who would oversee the circumcision and the official
naming of the child.

It
was customary to name a first-born son after his father, and that is what the elders
assume, until Elizabeth interrupts them and says that his name will be John, Yohanan, which means “the Lord is
gracious.”This is a break with
precedent, and for confirmation they turn to the baby’s father.John will be in this community, but his name, like that of Jesus, indicates that
he is not fully of the community.The one who gives him his name is not
tradition or family or community but God.And by giving John his name, God also gives John his identity, mission,
purpose, vision, and calling.

Zechariah
hasn’t been able to speak for 9 months, since the angel in the Temple informed
him that they would have this son.This is the first indication that he may have been deaf as well, as they have to communicate with him by hand
motions.He takes a tablet on
writes on it, “His name is John.”Then he launches into his famous inspired poem about who this child will
be.

But
Zechariah’s words are not just about John as an isolated individual.But most of it is about God and the
community God is choosing to address in this way.John is sent to a people.Zechariah’s hymn outlines the important qualities of the
community that will receive his son, and thereafter the promised Messiah.In other words, I propose that these
words are not just about John personally, but they also point to the kind of community that will be prepared to
welcome and nurture the good news of the Messiah.

The
Church of Jesus Christ has always sung this song.It was part of the daily prayer of monastic communities; and
it is also in our own Book of Common
Worship for use every day. This song has always been something we affirm defines
us as Christians.We see ourselves
in continuity with and as a continuation of the people to whom this prayer was
originally addressed.

II.

It
starts off with praise to God, and, like Mary’s song, it is framed in the past
tense.It looks to the future as
if it has already happened; that’s how firm is the trust and conviction of the
people that these promises are in the process of being fulfilled.

This
is the kind of faith we have to have as a community.We have to so firmly believe in God’s redemption that it
might as well have already happened, as far as we are concerned.In fact, in a strong sense it has already happened, and it is humans who have not caught up to the
reality.I mean, our creation,
redemption, and sanctification happen in time, but they are also timeless.

Jesus
says we should pray as if the things for which we are praying have already been
done, that we should pray as if our prayers have already been answered.We need to live so far as we are able
in the world as God made it.And
so Zechariah prays a prayer that welcomes and celebrates something that has not
yet taken place in history, but will.

So
the prayer looks ahead to promises fulfilled.And then it also looks back at the making of those promises
and their reception by God’s people.He mentions David and the prophets, and Abraham.The people of God are rooted in a
specific tradition, which is expressed in Scripture.Were it not for Scripture we would have no idea what to hope
for.We would have no clue about
God’s promises.We wouldn’t know
anything about what God has already done for the people.

The
“new thing” God is doing will not be totally unprecedented.It will be consistent with what God has
always been doing and what God has always promised.That is how we recognize, verify, and identify it.That is how we know when something is
or isn’t God’s will: is it consistent with what we already know about God from
Scripture?It is consistent with
the faith of God’s people from Abraham and Moses to today?

So
the community that dwells in expectation of the Messiah is one that is steeped
in Scripture.It’s stories become
our stories.They are the lens
through which we interpret our lives.And this is something that always happens together, as we gather around
the Word.These words are not
meant for individuals in isolation.The Bible was written to be read aloud to a group; the idea that
everyone would have their own copy for private reading was incomprehensible to
people prior to a few centuries ago.

We
are a community that bounces our experiences off of this book.We are in constant dialogue with the
word in Scripture.It is a “light
to our path” because without it we are absolutely clueless about what is going
on in the world and what it means.

III.

And
the first thing that the word has to do with, according to Zechariah, is being
rescued from the hands of our enemies.He mentions this twice in the first 7 verses.In verse 74 he says that this rescuing happens so that we
might serve God.

So
the community that gathers under the Word of God gathers sustained by the
experience of having been liberated from “enemies.”Obviously, the biggest enemy from whom the people have been
liberated is Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, who held all the people in cruel
bondage for centuries.Other
enemies include the tribes that harassed and attacked them in the wilderness,
like the Amalekites.There are the
petty tyrants who ruled in Canaan, there are the Philistines with whom they
were in constant competition.And
finally the succession of cruel imperial powers that swept through the area,
finally taking the people into exile in Babylon.

And
each time, God delivered the people from their hands.Not always without great suffering.But God always saves them.Always.Sometimes even by great miracles like the parting of the sea
or the return from the exile.

Enemies
can just be those humans who are thorns in our sides; we all have them.But more significantly I think enemies
are these forces and powers within us that keep moving us away from God.Addictions, habits, ways of thinking,
fears, angers… enemies are stories we tell ourselves because they make some
hurt part of us feel good, but they are not good.They turn us away from Jesus and lead us into idolatry:
tempting us to depend on something or someone or some power other than God.They focus us on our losses, or just
our potential losses; they dwell on our defeats and failures, they blame
someone else.

Enemies
tell us lies like that we are worthless, weak, disliked, stupid, ugly, or
sick.They oppress us by taking
our labor, or by obstructing our progress, or by undermining our community and
our relationships.

These
enemies can only be defeated in
community.Only by sharing stories
together, where we hear how God has helped others to overcome them, do we find
the strength within to overcome them ourselves.Our internal enemies want us alone, like a lion waits for a
zebra to separate from the herd.But when we stick together, relying on each other’s experience and
wisdom, listening together for God’s Word in our lives, then we are strong and
secure.

Then,
even when our enemies are actual
other people who bother and annoy us, their powers to do any real harm are often limited by the fact
that we have the arms of a loving community to counteract their hurtful
activity, a loving community representing a loving God.

IV.

The
point of all this, says Zechariah, is “to serve [God] without fear, in holiness
and righteousness before him all our days.”Serving God, obeying God, following God is what we are set
free from our enemies to do.God
does not free us for the sake of our own private, personal agenda.Not even for the sake of our
community’s collective purposes are
we freed.Like the Israelites, God
liberates us so we may serve God.The Israelites do not go their separate
ways after the exodus; they stick together and receive the Torah so as to serve
God as God’s people.

The
whole theme of my career as a pastor is that it is about discipleship.Christianity, the spiritual life, is
about following Jesus.It is about
putting your body where your faith is.When God defeats our addiction to death, God replaces it with a freedom
for life.Now we may follow God,
the Source of life, and participate in God’s life and God’s destiny.And to follow God is to live forever
because it means that eternity is present in your whole life.

Zechariah
then starts to talk about his son and his mission: “You child will be called
the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his
ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their
sins.”

We
know God in being forgiven.Forgiveness is what opens us up to the knowledge of God.Not judgment.Not condemnation.Not threats.But
forgiveness.If we don’t know God
in forgiveness, we don’t know God at all.

The
word used for forgiveness in Greek literally means “release.”John is to proclaim freedom,
liberation, emancipation, release, letting go.What we are to be released from is our sins, the acts of
failure, our shortcomings, our habitual turning away, that separates us from
God.

In
other words, it will be John’s job to proclaim to people, and give them a
liturgical ceremony to make visible, their release from their separation from
God.That ceremony would be
baptism, of course, a full-body immersion representing a cleansing and a new
birth.A person’s sin, a person’s
opposition to God’s purposes and God’s life, was supposed to fall away like the
water sheds off a body emerging from it into the light.

The
person and the community that prepares the way of the Lord proclaims and
witnesses to release, liberation, forgiveness.Our message is, “you are free!”And it is people who receive and take to heart this message
who are best able to turn and receive the Messiah, the Lord, when he comes.

V.

The
last two verses celebrate what we are waiting for, and they finally prepare us
for chapter 2.“By the tender
mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to
those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into
the way of peace.”

“The
light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”That’s the way John puts it.“The people that walked in darkness
have seen a great light.”Isaiah
puts it that way.Having prepared
ourselves by serving God together and accepting the forgiveness and liberation
God offers, we experience the divine light of God’s mercy driving away the
darkness so we can see to walk in the ways of peace.

Now,
where others see an unfortunate baby whose mother isforced to give birth to him in a barn and lay him in a feed
trough for animals, we see the living God, the Creator, emerging into the
creation!Where others see just
another Jewish man coming to John to be dunked in the river, we see the Holy
Spirit descending upon and blessing him as Messiah!Where others see a ragged ascetic emerging from the desert,
we see the One who has defeated the temptations of Satan!Where others see an itinerant rabbi and
miracle healer, we see God-with-us!Where others see another victim of Roman terror, nailed to a cross and
left to die in agony in the hot sun, we see God’s love poured out for the
release of the world from bondage.Where others see an empty tomb, we see the salvation of the world in the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from death, defeating death and hell, and leading
us to the final victory of life.

And
seeing what we do see in faith, we know ourselves to be guided in the way of
peace, the way of shalom, of justice, equality, righteousness, blessing,
beauty, goodness, and truth.The
way of healing, forgiveness, liberation, and renewal.And so these
qualities are what characterize our lives.We are witnesses to the love of God which is always being
poured into the world.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

This
week, after the terrible events of Friday, I can’t help but think about the
passage in Matthew 2, where King Herod, enraged that the magi from the east
escaped without telling him where he could find the infant Messiah, sends
soldiers who slaughter every male child in Bethlehem, two years old and
under.

Matthew’s
only comment is to tell us that this was in fulfillment of a passage from the
prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled because they are no
more.”

I
imagine there is no consolation when you lose a child, especially in such a
horrific and violent way.I
suspect that such a thing is something you bear in your soul for the rest of
your life.It is a grief that
never fully goes away.

There
is no way to make sense of it.There is no rational explanation.It is the invasion into our world by a malevolent force reaching up out
of the bowels of hell.That’s the
only image I can think of.What
else can we say when 20 children are slaughtered, along with 7 adults?We mourn without consolation.

Where
was God?Why didn’t God stop the
gunman?For that matter: Why
doesn’t God stop any of the mindless tragedies in our lives?Why didn’t God stop the cancer?Why didn’t God stop the
drunk-driver?Why didn’t God stop
the hurricane?Where was God, anyway?We might ask, “Who needs a God who
doesn’t show up when you need him?”

It
is a not a new or original question.It is something that all of us, and every generation, has to ask at some
point.Because sometimes it sure
seems like no one is in charge, like there’s no one protecting us or saving us,
like if there is a God he’s just not very good at his job.

Such
questions are honest and not unjustified.They express real emotions.And sometimes just expressing such emotions is a healing thing. There are many Psalms that express
these, and even less “nice” emotions.God understands this.So
God even gives us suitable prayers and hymns to use when we are particularly
angry with God.

As
far as what we can do, we can pray for those suffering the depths of
grief.We can be of service to
them, stand with them, listen to them, identify with them, and hold them.For we are all in this together.

And
so we do offer our heartfelt prayers and condolences, and we hold in our hearts
the families of those killed, and the whole community of Newtown, Connecticut.

II.

The
Bible is not unfamiliar with such horrors.It is written by and for people who continually find
themselves on the receiving end of the world’s violence and injustice, tyranny
and exploitation.The gospels are
in fact addressed to people who
experience the depths of human sorrow, anger, frustration, fear, loss, and
helplessness.They know gratuitous
violence and mass-murder.People
back then had the same questions we do.

In
answer to horrors like this massacre in Connecticut, God offers mainly a story, and a community rooted in and
expressive of that story.In that
story, the answer we receive to our heartfelt questions about where God is, is
that God is here, with us.God is with us in our pain and our loss, our confusion and
even our anger.In Jesus Christ,
the God who suffers with us and for us and because of us, is also the God who
thereby forgives, and heals, and saves us.

And
in taking on our suffering, God gives us a way to new life, both now and
forever.This story is embodied
and revealed and fulfilled and given to us in Jesus Christ.Through him, by the power of his
Spirit, we participate in God’s eternal story of salvation and deliverance.

For
our God is the One who brings life out of death, light into darkness, goodness
out of evil, and healing into our pain.The gospels are the story of how that happens.The early church had a saying: “God redeems whatever God
becomes.”God saves us by becoming
one with us in Jesus, opening the way to eternal life.

Where
was God Friday?God was in and
with the suffering, bleeding, and dying children, crying with them in their
pain and terror, blessing their gentleness and goodness, and gathering them
into the everlasting arms of love.And God is also there in the souls of that broken community and
shattered families, saying: “You are mine.I am with you.I will never forsake you; not even this
can separate you from my love.Indeed, this only draws you closer to Me.”

It
just so happens that this is the particular message of this season of
Advent.These stories about Jesus’
and John’s parents, and the circumstances of their births, serve to open us and
prepare us for the coming of God into the world to save.This
is how God emerges in our world; this is how God manifests in our own hearts, and in our communities.This is how human life is lifted up out
of the sewer of despair, horror, and fear.This is how we are brought out of slavery into freedom.

Here
is God’s answer: to show up… not as
the magic genie who fulfills our every desire; not as the Omnipotent Avenger
comic-book character.But really
to show up, to appear, to emerge as one of us, among us, with us.Emmanu-el: God is with us.God enters the messy, painful,
confusing, ambiguous, challenging world.That’s the way God saves, heals, and liberates the world and all of us.

III.

God’s
very presence in our world in Jesus Christ is revolutionary.Some of the writings of the early
church about the Lord’s Nativity make this clear.They talk about the immortal becoming mortal, the eternal
becoming temporal, the highest becoming low, the Creator becoming part of
creation, and so forth.And they
also talk about how because God did this, because God condescends from eternal
glory into the small, smelly, vulnerable container of human flesh, therefore
also we created fleshly earthlings were exalted into the very Presence of the
eternal God!

This
descent by God, which Paul calls God’s self-emptying, sets the pattern for
God’s revolution in which all
hierarchies and pecking orders and classes and castes, and divisions and
separations in creation are reversed.I’ve said repeatedly that this is what God’s law in the Torah wanted to do: bring down all
Pharaohs and kings and rulers, and lift up the slaves so that all were equal
sharers in God’s rule.

In
Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, God demonstrates what the gathered community
comes to know: the way up… is down.Jesus says that the ones who are blessed, that is, the ones who are
closest to God, are the ones who have hit bottom: the poor, the gentle, the
peacemakers, the merciful, the pure in heart... the mourning.Those
wracked with grief and sorrow beyond bearing, are closest to the love and joy
at the very heart of the universe.God’s presence is revolutionary; it is about reversal, overturning.

In
today’s story we begin with a little dance between Mary and Elizabeth over
their comparative status.Formal etiquette
dictates that the person of lower status should come to the higher.Yet here is Mary, the bearer of God’s
promised Messiah, making a trip to visit Elizabeth, the one who will only bear
the Messiah’s forerunner.Elizabeth is older, of course, and probably of a higher status
socially.But she herself quickly
sees that she is inferior to
Mary.She reasons that Mary should
not therefore be coming to her.She should have gone to visit Mary.

This
upending of social rules and roles is precisely what both of these boys whom
the women will bear will be about.Those kinds of status divisions and hierarchies will be wiped away in
their ministries.Now it is no
longer the case that older is better than younger, or the wife of a respected
priest is better than an unwed, pregnant teenager from Nazareth, or even that
the mother of the Messiah is privileged over the mother of a prophet.

IV.

These
two women are co-conspirators in this revolution, this insurrection, this
insurgency, against the established order of things.These are the
people whom God chooses to overthrow the principalities and powers that rule
the world: two pregnant women, an old one and a young one.

If
you or I were going to start a social movement, choosing two pregnant women as
leaders would probably not be what our consultants would advise.Yet this is where God starts.God always starts at the bottom, with
some of the least likely people imaginable.

Mary
then erupts into her famous poem of praise to the Lord.“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my
spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness
of his servant.”

Mary
doesn’t grovel.She doesn’t
consume herself with ruminations about how she is not worthy.She does not have that
deer-in-the-headlights look, as if she has been taken and thrown into something
far beyond her abilities.Of
course, she has been taken and thrown
into something far beyond her
abilities, and that’s the point.She does not have
to rely on her abilities!She simply trusts in what God is doing
through her and enthusiastically goes along for the ride.

She
realizes and embraces her selection to bear the awesome responsibility of being
the mother of the Messiah, knowing that it is not because of anything she has done or may do, but that God will give her what she needs to do
this.

It
is sometimes said that “God never gives us more than we can handle.”That’s nonsense!God always
gives us more than we can handle; that’s how we know it is from God.What God doesn’t do
is give us more than God can
handle.No way Mary or any human
can do this on their own.The
point is that this is something God
is doing through her.In fact, she has to let go of whatever
abilities she thinks she has for this.

What
works for Mary in her unconventional pregnancy, also works for us in our times
of less promising and more horrible crisis.Having your 6-year-old child shot at school is more than any
of us can handle, believe me.Don’t even try to handle it
yourself; the weight of that much sorrow and grief could kill you.But God, the
Creator/Redeemer/Sustainer, can
handle it for you, in you, with you.

When
God acts, our job is to not get in the way.Our job is not to be an obstacle or a hindrance to what God
is doing.Mary’s entire
responsibility was exhausted when she said “yes.”“I am the servant of the Lord.Let it happen to me according to [God’s] Word.”We only say that knowing that God’s Word and will in Jesus Christ is always and only to bless and heal and deliver and save.

V.

This
weekend we distracted ourselves with a light movie called The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.One of the themes of the film is something the young Indian
hotel manager says: “Things always work out for the best in the end.And if things aren’t working out for
the best, it’s not the end.”

That
sounds a little glib when you tell it to someone in profound grief and sorrow. But it’s still true.It is the message and meaning of the
resurrection.Martin Luther King
famously said that “the arc of history is long, but it always bends towards
justice.”The Apostle Paul said
that “All things work together for good to those who love God, who are called
according to his purpose.”The
resurrection means that God and love and life always win, in the end.If Satan and death and hatred seem to
be winning, well, it’s just not the end yet.

In
terms of Mary’s hymn: if the proud, the powerful, and the rich appear to be
winning, it’s just not the end.There’s more to come.Because God’s will is to lift up the humble, the lowly, and the
hungry.And God’s will is always
done.Always.

All
this could be mindless wishful-thinking, even sentimental platitudes, were it
not for the cross.The way God brings good out of evil, and
light into darkness, and life from death, is by giving up life, identifying
with us even unto death on a cross, suffering the depths of human pain, bearing
the consequences and rancid fruit of our sinfulness, becoming a sacrificial
offering, going into the deepest, darkest, most painful and fearsome place in
human existence, descending even into hell itself, and emerging with us in his
arms.

That’s
how God saves us.By venturing
into our worst places, and pulling us through. God is most present to us in our most extreme pain and loss
and failings.In our brokenness is
where God shows up.That’s where
we identify with God and God identifies with us.

Most
of Mary’s hymn is in the past tense, even though the things she celebrates
haven’t happened yet.But because
God promises them in the end, they might as well have happened already.They have happened in the sense that
these promises are even now becoming realized in our lives.These promises are real; it is we who are slow to get the memo.It is we who continue to make the world
a living hell, in spite of the truth that hell is vanquished.

In
the meantime, we live in the light of the end as it shines forth in the
community of those who love and follow Jesus.